Lightwave.

I use it. It was a little harder to get into compared to Maya and XSI (I find 3DS Max even stranger than LW though). So that's why I bought Inside Lightwave [8] by Dan Ablan. It does a pretty good run through of the entire program, however it doesn't get into specifics on the more broad topics. But, it still got me into the flow of using the program.

Unfortunately, I don't really have anything much worth showing other than some dinky little un-textured models I ended up making during the learning process. I havn't really gone back to make use of everything that I learned with the book, and probably even forgot a few things.

I remember the texturing stuff not being very apparent at first too. But again, the farthest I got was UVing a cube I think.

tried it because its native to the doom 3 engine. Didn't care for it much. Then I found out that maya is also native to the doom 3 engine, so I stopped using lightwave and went back to maya.

I personally think 3dsmax is the best way to go, I have used other 3d applications such as lightwave and xsi and I seem to work much slower in those programs than 3ds, also 3ds is probably the most well known when it comes to modeling for game design. If you want to learn how to use 3dsmax go to http://www.3d-palace.com they offer alot of great video tutorials for 3dsmax and many other 3d apps. And if you don’t have alot of money like me then you can always get gmax which is basically the same as 3ds, except you cannot render and they limit alot of things you can do